Cleric Calls for Resistance to U.S. Presence in Iraq

Saturday

Nov 15, 2008 at 5:14 AM

The anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called for armed resistance against any security agreement that allowed a continued U.S. presence in Iraq.

BAGHDAD — As the Iraqi cabinet prepares to vote on a security agreement for American troops, the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called Friday for armed resistance against any agreement that allowed a continued United States presence in Iraq.

“I repeat my demand to the occupier to leave our land without keeping bases or signing agreements,” Mr. Sadr said in a statement read to thousands of supporters at Friday Prayer. “If they keep bases, then I would support honorable resistance.”

Tension is rising here over the agreement as the vote nears, even if few oppose it to the extremes of Mr. Sadr and his followers. An aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, also indicated that he would intervene in some way if the draft did not enjoy the full support of the Iraqi people. But Ayatollah Sistani, who far outranks Mr. Sadr, has consistently advocated nonviolence.

Iraqi officials expect the coalition cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to vote Sunday on whether to send the current draft to Parliament for approval. It is unclear whether it will pass through either body, though some officials are optimistic. “Most of the blocs agree, and there is no bloc that entirely refuses the pact except for the Sadrists,” said Sami al-Askari, a Shiite lawmaker and member of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party.

Others are wavering. The Kurds, one of the groups supporting the agreement, have recently expressed hesitation about the current draft, worrying that the semiautonomous Kurdish region could lose power to the central government.

Several days ago, Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, called President Bush and urged him to accept more changes to the agreement, said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of Parliament. “It is unfortunate that some of the leaders in the Kurdish alliance are in a hurry to support this pact,” Mr. Othman said. “The pact is not good for the Kurds.”

The United Nations Security Council resolution that allows American troops to operate in Iraq expires Dec. 31. Without an extension of the resolution or a separate agreement with the Iraqis, American troops would have to cease operations.

After eight months of negotiations, the Americans have said they regard the current draft of the agreement as final, though Mr. Askari said the Americans had recently accepted additional Iraqi demands, including the government’s authority to grant American troops permission to search houses.

The draft also sets a timeline for troop withdrawals from Iraqi cities by next June and a withdrawal of combat troops from the country by the end of 2011.

Publicly, Ayatollah Sistani has said that he will not interfere in the negotiations as long as Iraqi sovereignty is honored, though he has not specified exactly what that means. The ayatollah is enormously influential among Iraq’s majority Shiite population; in 2004, when he wanted to put pressure on the Americans to hold direct elections, he called upon his followers to march by the hundreds of thousands in a peaceful but powerful demonstration of force.

An official in the ayatollah’s office in Najaf, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said the clerics were willing to intervene in the current negotiations “if the agreement violates sovereignty.”

Mr. Sadr has long opposed any pact that would leave American troops on Iraqi soil. This summer, he announced that he was dividing his militia, the Mahdi Army, into a social service wing called the Momahidoun and an armed wing made up of elite fighters who would attack only non-Iraqi forces. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Sadr named the armed wing publicly for the first time: Ilyoom Al Mawoud, or the Promised Day Brigade.

He also reached out to “special groups,” the armed militias that the Americans say are being trained by Iran, and urged members of the groups to abandon their leaders and join his brigade. He referred to these groups as the Asa’ib, or bands. It was unclear whether he was talking generally about special groups or about a specific group that the Americans have recently identified as the Asa’ib ahl al-Haq, or Bands of Right, a network that the Americans say is sponsored by Iran and broke off from the Sadrists.

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